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WHAT  OUR  COUNTRY 
CHURCHES  NEED 


540  Methodist  Review  [July 


s 

Art.  III.— WHAT  OUR  COUNTRY  CHURCHES  NEED1 

I.  Before  it  can  be  said  that  our  country  churches  need  any- 
thing it  must  be  shown  that  society  needs  the  country  churches. 
Some  people  think  there  is  no  place  for  country  churches.  They 
are  said  to  be  out  of  date.  They  have  done  their  work.  Like 
worn  out  carriages  or  dilapidated  buildings,  they  are  not  worth 
the  space  they  occupy.  The  sooner  they  are  disposed  of  the  better. 
Some  expert  students  of  social  problems  hold  just  this  opinion. 
Edward  Pearson  Pressey  says  that  the  churches  are  hopeless  and 
helpless.  He  thinks  that  if  there  is  any  place  for  the  country 
church  it  must  be  greatly  supplemented  by  an  idealistic  system 
of  industrial  and  domestic  education  as  represented  by  his  New 
Clairvaux,  or  arts  and  crafts  school  at  Montague,  Massachusetts. 
This  is  a  Utopian  combination  of  home,  factory,  farm,  an  ideal 
town  organization,  and  a  school  of  trades  and  sciences.  Rollin 
Lynde  Hartt  seems  to  believe  that  the  usual  form  of  the  church 
may  well  be  displaced  by  the  country  social  settlement  with  reli- 
gious features.  Such  a  settlement  would  be  a  combination  of 
farm,  factory,  hotel,  cooperative  store,  library,  and  a  bureau  of 
social  research  and  instruction.  Something  like  his  idea  is 
embodied  in  the  Church  Settlement  Association  of  New  Hamp- 
shire, at  Elmwood,  near  Concord.  The  theories  of  Pressey  and 
Hartt  certainly  have  great  suggestive  and  educative  value.  But 
while  Pressey's  is  as  unpractical — even  his  experimental  enter- 
prise— as  would  be  the  effort  to  raise  America's  wheat  crop  in 
New  England  greenhouses,  there  are  only  two  difficulties  with 
Hartt's  idea.  In  the  first  place,  it  absolutely  cannot  be  realized, 
and,  in  the  second  place,  we  already  have  what  is  better.  One 
might  as  well  expect  to  plant  and  grow  prosperous  cities,  like  the 
forty  best  in  the  United  States,  in  Sahara  Desert  as  to  make  a 
success  of  extensive  social  settlements  in  decadent  country  towns 
which,  for  the  most  part,  ought  never  to  have  been  anything  but 


1 A  discussion  based  upon  a  study  of  the  country  church  problem  made  by  the  author 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Carnegie  Institution  at  Washington,  Department  of  Economics 
and  Sociology  to  which  acknowledgment  is  made  for  the  use  of  data. 


1907]  What  Our  Country  Churches  Need  541 

productive  timber  orchards.  On  the  other  hand,  in  towns  that 
ought  to  live  the  usual  agencies  of  church,  school,  grange,  club, 
town  library,  and  the  various  recreational  and  commercial  or 
industrial  organizations,  all  in  normal  interaction,  are  doing  more 
to  make  rural  society  large,  beautiful,  and  worthily  human  than 
could  be  possible  for  any  scheme  not  of  the  people's  own  choosing. 
Social  evolution,  as  a  method  of  interpreting  social  facts,  cannot 
do  everything,  but  it  ought  to  teach  one  that  radical  theories  cannot 
cause  the  sun  to  rise  at  midnight.  Jewell  D wight  Hillis,  of 
Brooklyn,  and  many  others  believe  that  the  rural  institutional 
cathedral  church  ought  to,  and  will  in  time,  take  the  place  of  our 
country  churches  in  their  ordinary  form.  This  would  seem  a 
consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished.  Perhaps  this  will  actually 
mark  the  program  of  the  development  of  the  largest  and  most 
potent  stream  of  organized  rural  Christianity.  In  regard  to  the 
spiritual  nature  and  work  of  the  church  it  would  have  the  advan- 
tage of  keeping  the  emphasis  in  the  right  place.  The  personal 
factor  would  not  be  betrayed,  for  there  would  seem  to  be  great 
practical  wisdom  in  having  a  senior  preacher  for  expert  leader- 
ship and  his  assistant  pastors  and  deaconesses  for  more  direct 
personal  service  to  the  remotest  country  neighborhood  and  home. 
Such  suggestions  and  experiments  are  of  great  worth  to  rural 
religious  work  and  life.  They  are  a  timely  rebuke  to  some  dead 
rural  churches.  But  with  the  rapid  increase  in  our  communities 
of  the  Grange,  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  the  fra- 
ternal lodges  and  literary  clubs,  farmers'  institutes,  and  village 
improvement  societies,  to  say  nothing  of  the  work  of  improved 
schools  and  numerous  town  libraries  and  the  influence  of  the  rural 
telephone  and  trolley,  free  mail  delivery,  and  the  increased  circula- 
tion of  the  daily  press,  I  believe  that  the  country  church  is  less 
and  less  called  upon  to  do  organized  social  work.  When  rural 
society  becomes  well  adjusted  to  the  responsibilities  of  the  new 
industrial  type  of  life  even  modest  country  institutional  churches 
will  not  be  very  common.  The  successful  country  church  today 
is  the  one  that  knows  how  to  be  a  consistent  church,  true  to  its 
Christian  professions,  realizing  its  essential  moral  mission  to  the 
whole  of  society,  minding  its  own  spiritual  and  ethical  affairs  first 


542  Methodist  Review  [July 

of  all,  and  then  strong  enough  and  sensible  enough  to  cooperate) 
for  the  church  is  a  social  institution,  with  other  social  institutions 
that  stand  for  any  aspect  whatever,  however  secular,  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  among  men.  Whatever  form  or  name  it  may  take, 
the  country  church  of  the  future  will  be  more  and  more  specialized 
as  it  becomes  more  and  more  alive  to  the  spiritual  and  ethical 
enlightenment  and  leadership  of  the  complete  mass  of  rural  society. 
But  what  a  few  students  and  writers  say  or  reflect  against  the 
church  is  of  slight  importance.  What  should  give  us  deeper  con- 
cern is  the  attitude  of  the  people  as  a  whole.  Too  many  people 
in  most  of  our  towns  by  their  habits  of  not  attending  church  are 
saying  that  the  church  is  no  good.  They  do  not  contribute  of  their 
means  toward  the  support  of  the  church.  Their  indifference 
deprives  them  of  the  weekly  blessing  of  changing  their  clothes. 
They  need  moral  quickening  as  much  as  though  they  lived  in  the 
wilds  of  Africa.  In  too  many  cases  distance  from  the  church  or 
the  low  moral  standards  of  church  people  in  the  common  walks  of 
life  are  no  restraint  to  lives  of  open  immorality  and  shame.  It 
would  be  a  relief  if  the  lukewarmness  of  some  might  be  awakened 
to  even  ribald  opposition.  One  of  the  best  helpers  in  church  work 
I  ever  knew  was  an  uncomfortable  skeptic  who  would  hail  people 
on  the  street  to  curse  and  ridicule  union  revival  services  then  in 
progress.  Some  people  who  grind  their  unhappy  lives  away  for 
the  almighty  dollar,  if  their  minds  were  not  as  small  as  their 
souls,  might  well  be  asked,  "What  would  real  estate  be  worth  in 
Sodom  ?"  The  graft  of  professional  mendicants  upon  the  charities 
of  city  rescue  missions  is  not  so  exasperating  as  to  have  well-to-do 
country  people,  as  is  often  the  case,  demand  Christian  burial  for 
the  members  of  their  families  at  the  expense  of  time,  patient  care, 
and  sometimes  travel  to  distant  places  on  the  part  of  faithful 
ministers,  who  would  be  harshly  criticised  if  they  did  not  show 
the  general  culture  and  special  training  worth  valuable  years  in  the 
schools  and  thousands  of  money,  and  yet  these  ungrateful,  mis- 
placed souls  help  the  church  or  parson  directly  or  indirectly  by 
never  a  cent.  But  all  this  is  a  matter  of  cultivation,  of  civiliza- 
tion, in  which  the  church  should  be  the  leader.  She  should  not 
complain  because  there  is  something  yet  for  her  to  do.     If  what 


1907]  What  Our  Country  Churches  Need  543 

a  few  social  workers  say  is  a  rebuke  to  dead  churches,  the  inaction 
of  multitudes  of  perverse  minds  should  be  a  Macedonian  cry  to 
every  church  that  knows  the  first  principles  of  Christian  living. 

But  what  about  the  multitudes  of  ministers,  and  other  once 
faithful  and  intelligent  workers  in  the  churches,  who  have  become 
discouraged,  losing  faith  in  the  churches?     It  is  very  easy  for 
young  men  of  scholarly  inclinations,  who  must  of  necessity  drink 
deeply  at  the  fountains  of  history,  science,  philosophy,  and  the- 
ology in  lives  of  strenuous  devotion  to  books  and  theories,  to  allow 
knowledge  to  crowd  experience  from  its  proper  place,  devotion  to 
the  truth  of  theology  to  leave  no  room  for  the  service  of  love,  the 
religion  of  idealism  to  dethrone  the  happy  fruition  of  the  redemp- 
tion of  an  infinite  Christ.     This  is  a  suggestion  of  the  way  in 
which  some  students  and  preachers  may  have  lost  grip  upon  them- 
selves, so  that  the  trellis  of  thought  stands  cold  and  alone  without 
the  beauty  of  the  living  vine. of  joyous,  throbbing  reality.     For- 
getting the  gospel  of  Paul  and  Luther,  Chalmers  and  Wesley, 
Kingsley  and  Spurgeon,  they  have  preached  theories,  or  a  philoso- 
phy that  cannot  regenerate,  in  the  place  of  a  gospel  that  inter^ 
prets  life  as  love,  makes  manhood  complete,  and  society  a  para- 
dise.    It  is  no  wonder  that  when  preachers  and  people  forsake 
personal  Christian  service,  and  have  more  concern  for  "salvation 
by  statistics"  than  for  regeneration  through  a  personal  Christ, 
they  have  the  opportunity  of  reading  and  listening  to  poetic  essays 
in  congregations  more  and  more  wooden  with  empty  benches.     Is 
it  any  wonder  that  such  men — and  they  are  laymen  as  well  as 
clergymen — lose  faith  in  and  leave  the  churches  they  have  thus 
devitalized?     Philosophy  and  science  are  not  to  be  despised  in 
the  service  of  the  church,  but  they  must  be  crowned  by  the  golden 
fruits  of  faith.     But  there  is  a  more  practical  side  to  this  matter. 
It  comes  to  us  as  the  supreme  practical  challenge  of  the  church 
in  this  age.     Whenever  a  preacher  says,  "I  am  tempted  to  leave 
the  ministry,  because  I  seem  unable  to  do  the  work  of  a  minister," 
it  makes  a  person  both  angry  and  ambitious.     He  is  angry  that 
the  theological  seminaries  do  not  teach  sociology  as  well  as  the- 
ology, about  men  and  the  world  as  well  as  about  God  and  heaven. 
But  nothing  is  more  strikingly  true,  and  as  pathetic  as  true,  than 


544  Methodist  Review  [July 

that  our  theological  faculties  cannot  teach  what  nobody  knows. 
And  then  one  is  fired  with  ambition  to  know  the  problem  in  a 
large,  true  way,  as  no  one  yet  can  really  profess  to  have  gained  such 
knowledge.  Theology  cannot  presume  to  teach  us  all  that  is  essen- 
tial to  be  known  about  the  church,  which  is  so  largely  a  human 
organization.  Sociology  cannot  formulate  all  of  our  knowledge 
concerning  the  church,  the  largest  concerns  of  which  are  realized 
only  in  the  skies.  Social  evolution  is  necessary  as  a  method  of 
study — though  it  is  limited,  for  neither  men  nor  churches  can  be 
measured  by  a  knowledge  of  their  environment.  So  each  dis- 
couraged worker  must  follow  his  best  light,  and  work  and  wait, 
with  zeal  and  patience,  through  the  dawning  hours  of  the  truer 
interpretation.  If  the  need  of  the  country  churches  is  to  be 
measured  by  the  possibilities  that  lie  in  them,  then  that  need  is 
very  great.  More  than  one  half  of  the  total  population  of  the 
United  States  will  have  their  religious  and  moral  instruction  and 
leadership  directly  or  indirectly  from  the  country  churches  or  they 
must  remain  destitute.  Aside  from  this  fact  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  the  ethical  quality  of  modern  city  life  depends  to  a 
very  large  extent  upon  the  quality  of  manhood  and  womanhood 
our  country  parishes  are  producing.  It  is  true  that  both  the  cream 
and  the  scum  of  the  country  go  to  the  city.  Our  country 
churches  feed  the  city  churches,  and  at  the  same  time  our  rural 
weaklings  and  degenerates  fill  the  city  saloons,  and  replenish  the 
slums,  and  greatly  enhance  the  urban  problem  of  the  submerged 
tenth.  I  believe  there  is  no  other  institution  that  actually  has, 
in  spite  of  its  faults  and  misfortunes,  so  great  a  potentiality,  and 
thus  mission  and  responsibility,  in  maintaining  the  moral  integrity 
of  the  American  people  as  the  country  church. 

II.  In  the  next  place  it  is  useless  to  talk  about  what  our  coun- 
try churches  need  to  make  them  entirely  efficient  if  it  can  be 
shown  that  they  have  no  needs  and  are  not  deficient  in  results. 
If  a  person  is  in  perfect  health  and  is  doing  his  full  amount  of 
work,  he  certainly  needs  no  physician.  There  are  many  people 
and  preachers  who  think  that  if  church  attendance  remains  con- 
stant and  there  are  no  losses  in  church  membership,  the  churches 
are  all  right.     Perhaps  some  will  be  so  fair  as  to  set  their  standard 


1907]  What  Our  Country  Churches  Need  545 

at  maintaining  a  constant  relation  between  church  membership  and 
the  population  of  the  town.  Viewed  from  this  standpoint  there 
are  indeed  many  churches  that  are  not  failing  in  their  hold  upon 
the  people.  But  the  question  is,  Are  they  making  positive  gains  ? 
To  be  satisfied  with  being  equal  to  the  past  is  lazy  nonsense  in 
such  a  progressive  age  as  ours.  And  then  the  church  is  not  made 
responsible  for  a  select  part  of  society,  but  for  the  whole  of  it. 

Let  us  look  somewhat  carefully  at  both  sides  of  this  question 
of  the  progress  of  the  church.  On  the  side  of  progress  let  us  be 
encouraged  that  one  presiding  elder  has  recently  said  in  regard 
to  New  England  Methodism :  "Let  me  state  as  a  profound  con- 
viction that  our  times  are  not  worse  than  former  times."  But 
should  we  not  be  profoundly  stirred  because  they  are  not  much 
better  than  former  times  ?  Indeed  there  are  some  indications  of 
healthy  increase.  The  Rev.  W.  F.  English,  Ph.D.,  of  Connecti- 
cut, has  recently  said:  "While  naturally  and  inevitably  some 
churches  have  lost  in  members  and  opportunity  for  service,  the 
church  membership  in  relation  to  population  has  gained,  a  more 
intensive  spiritual  culture  has  been  promoted,  and  a  new  country 
church  has  been  developed  by  the  very  stress  of  circumstances," 
After  a  somewhat  extensive  comparative  study  of  figures  and  of 
expert  opinions  I  am  convinced  that  the  social  problem  of  the 
church  today  in  New  England  is  not  so  great  as  at  any  previous 
time  in  fifty  years.  In  making  this  statement  the  statistics  of 
church  membership  and  attendance  are  considered  as  the  chief 
measure  of  the  problem.  In  spite  of  these  encouraging  things 
there  is  an  immense  danger  of  a  too  easy  optimism.  There  are 
still  as  many  tasks  as  rewards  for  the  rural  churches.  Let  those 
listen  to  the  following  remarks  who  think  we  are  ready  for  a 
millennial  jubilee.  The  Rev.  C.  E.  Hayward  says  in  Institutional 
Work  for  the  Country  Church:  "But  few  country  churches  can 
be  said  to  be  in  a  flourishing  condition ;  the  majority  are  hardly 
holding  their  own,  some  are  losing  ground,  all  are  struggling 
heroically  for  life,  but  the  tide  is  against  them ;  something  must 
be  done.  In  fact,  some  country  churches  have  a  constituency  so 
heterogeneous  that  it  becomes  practically  a  mission  field."  The 
Rev.  Henry  Fairbanks,  Ph.D.,  has  said  of  rural  conditions,  after 

36 


546  Methodist  Review  [July 

a  very  extensive  first-hand  investigation:  "The  danger  of  relapse 
into  barbarism  in  these  districts  is  not  due  to  immigration.  Those 
now  growing  up  in  the  mountain  towns  will  go  out  to  be  leaders 
of  men,  and  it  is  a  fact  of  fearful  import  that  the  gospel  is  not 
reaching  them.  A  majority  of  our  people  are  never  at  church. 
Of  those  living  two  miles  or  more  from  church,  only  about  one 
third  attend  church.  In  the  rural  districts  of  New  England  and 
New  York,  from  which  the  strongest  men  in  the  cities  and  West 
are  coming,  more  than  half  of  the  people  are  not  only  unreached 
but  are  absolutely  unapproached  by  any  direct  Christian  efforts." 
President  Hyde,  of  Bowdoin  College,  said  a  few  years  since  in 
an  article  entitled  "Impending  Paganism  in  New  England" : 
"New  England  today  is  confronted  with  the  danger  that  the  coun- 
try village  will  be  the  first  to  lapse  from  vital  Christianity ;  .  .  . 
that  rusticity  will  again  become  synonymous  with  godlessness  and 
superstition."  In  the  summer  of  1905  I  found  that  in  one  New 
England  state,  in  fifteen  average  rural  towns,  having  a  total  of 
twenty-five  churches,  the  average  church  attendance  was  only  13.7 
per  cent  of  the  town  population.  Less  than  one  seventh  of  the 
people  were  regularly  at  church !  The  average  church  attendance 
in  four  urban  towns,  one  of  them  being  the  state  capital,  was  33 
per  cent  of  the  total  population.  These  figures  certainly  are  not 
encouraging.  I  think  we  are  ready  to  grant  that  the  country 
needs  the  churches,  they  being  the  sole  means,  directly  or 
indirectly,  in  the  moral  and  religious  quickening  and  cultivation 
of  the  people.  Neither  will  we  deny  that  the  churches  themselves 
need  to  be  greatly  reenforced  before  they  will  be  able  to  perform 
their  whole  mission — that  of  spiritualizing  rural  society. 

III.  Now  we  are  ready  to  ask  the  question,  What  do  the 
country  churches  so  need  that,  if  this  were  supplied,  they  would 
be  able  to  fulfill  their  complete  mission  ?  By  this  question  we 
mean  to  inquire  for  the  one  primary  need  of  the  churches.  The 
first  answer  that  will  usually  be  given  to  this  question  is  that 
more  money  is  the  great  need  of  the  rural  churches.  The  mem- 
bers of  all  churches  need  their  societies  to  be  free  from  debt,  or 
else  they  need  to  pay  larger  salaries  to  better  preachers.  In  Ver- 
mont five  sevenths  of  the  demand  for  church  union  and  federation 


1907]  What  Our  Country  Churches  Need  547 

arises  from  economic  necessity.  In  one  district  in  New  England 
I  found  eighteen  out  of  twenty  average  rural  clergymen  positively 
limited  in  their  usefulness  by  inadequate  financial  support.  The 
need  of  money  is  emphasized  when  faithful  people  cannot  pay  as 
much  as  they  wish  toward  the  church,  and  too  often  those  who  are 
abundantly  able  to  give  are  without  the  inclination.  But  the 
financial  need  of  country  churches  is  not  primary,  however  neces- 
sary. It  is  possible  that  churches  with  the  most  money  may 
be  the  least  helpful  to  society.  Poor  churches  and  people  alike 
may  be  the  richest  in  faith,  good  works,  and  noble  characters. 
The  mission  of  the  church  being  what  it  is,  and  human  nature 
being  as  it  is,  the  usefulness  of  the  church  is  sure  not  to  increase 
in  proportion  to  the  increase  of  its  money.  Large  endowments 
for  country  churches  are  not  advisable.  Francis  Minton  has  said 
of  the  rural  endowments  of  England :  "Evidence  appears  to  lead 
to  the  conclusion  that  endowments  are  a  mistake.  The  endow- 
ment artificially  keeps  the  institution  alive,  when,  if  left  to  the 
natural  environment,  it  would  die.  Better  that  it  should  die  in 
the  natural  course  than  to  outlive  its  usefulness."  It  matters  not 
how  destitute  and  in  distress  our  churches  and  ministers  may  be, 
money  is  at  best  only  an  incidental  necessity  and  not  a  primary 
requirement.  There  is  something  else,  which,  if  it  is  supplied, 
the  money  problem  will  be  solved.  A  great  many  people  believe 
that  the  primary  need  of  country  churches  is  an  improved  clergy. 
Some  have  said:  "Give  us  an  adequate  clergy  and  our  churches 
will  be  all  right ;  otherwise  not."  I  will  agree  with  the  "other- 
wise not,"  but  we  cannot  put  the  full  responsibility  of  successful 
churches  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  ministers,  especially  when  90 
per  cent  of  them  do  not  have  enough  upon  which  to  live.  Someone 
has  said  that  the  great  need  of  the  churches  is  no  ministers  at  all, 
at  least  until  the  churches  can  learn  that  some  ministers  are  first 
men,  then  ministers.  A  Catholic  woman  once  told  her  little  girl, 
speaking  of  a  certain  pastor :  "He  is  not  a  man,  he's  a  minister." 
If  a  mistaken  churchism  had  not  been  responsible  for  the  remark, 
it  would  have  been  an  insult.  The  hardest  thing  that  the  ministry 
as  a  class  has  to  endure  is  that  they  are  treated  artificially,  as 
though  they  were  trying  to  do  a  work  that  is  aside  from  normal 


648  Methodist  Review  [July 

human  needs.  Bishop  Hendrix  is  doubtless  right  in  saying  that 
"the  honor  of  the  temple  has  never  survived  the  honor  of  the 
priest."  The  first  responsibility  of  spiritual  and  social  leadership 
in  the  church  rests  with  the  clergymen.  But  where  are  the  minis- 
ters to  come  from  ?  There  is  as  yet  no  patent  process  for  the 
manufacture  of  ministers  to  order  and  warranted  to  suit.  Minis- 
ters grow,  like  other  men,  in  the  homes  of  the  people.  The 
church,  after  all,  is  the  father  of  its  clergy.  It  is  doubtless  true 
that  the  ministry  is  the  chief  channel  through  which  the  funda- 
mental need  of  the  country  churches  is  to  be  supplied.  "But 
we  cannot  have  churches  without  people,"  someone  is  sure  to  say. 
This  statement  is  not  so  trite  as  it  may  at  first  seem.  There  are 
several  causes  which  are  right;  and  even  beneficial  in  their  larger 
influence,  even  though  their  first  effect  is  to  rob  the  churches  of 
their  people.  For  instance,  the  centralization  of  industry  has 
drawn  the  people  from  the  smaller  to  the  larger  towns,  and  aban- 
doned towns  certainly  cannot  have  full  churches.  The  freedom 
in  Protestantism  of  the  private  interpretation  of  revelation  has 
led  to  the  rise  of  the  denominations,  and  where  churches  multiply 
faster  than  the  people  the  process  of  division  is  inevitable.  But 
in  the  main  the  trouble  is  not  that  there  are  not  enough  people 
for  the  churches  in  rural  communities,  for,  as  a  rule,  half  of  the 
rural  people  are  even  now  outside  of  the  churches.  There  is 
another  side  to  this  matter.  Since  it  is  the  work  of  the  church 
to  give  the  religious  character  to  all  the  members  of  rural  society, 
and  to  spiritualize  all  social  forces,  it  is  possible  for  the  social 
problem  of  the  church  to  be  very  great  even  though  all  the  people 
were  regular  church  attendants.  Quantity  is  not  always  the 
measure  of  quality.  Although  there  can  be  no  church  without 
people,  there  is  something  which  the  church,  as  a  nucleus  of  peo- 
ple, may  have  in  order  that  to  draw  and  hold  and  help  will  be  the 
rule  and  not  the  exception.  There  are  various  specialized  forms 
of  social,  educational,  and  religious  enterprise  that  are  sometimes 
advocated  as  sufficient,  each  in  itself,  for  the  solution  of  all  church 
problems.  For  instance,  one  specialist  may  stand  for  evangelism, 
as  though  this  alone  would  bring  all  churches  to  Christian  com- 
pleteness without  the  use  of  other  forms  of  enterprise.     Another 


1907]  What  Our  0 wintry  Churches  Need  549 

may  think  that  church  federation  is  the  one  thing  needful.  The 
third  believes  in  the  so-called  institutional  activities  as  sufficient 
to  unite  earth  and  heaven.  Each  of  these  alone  may  have  been 
seen  to  realize  in  some  church  the  highest  ends  this  side  of  heaven, 
but  such  could  happen  only  when  the  other  needs  of  the  church 
were  already  provided.  The  specialist  has  his  place  so  long  as 
he  does  not  become  a  monopolist;  then  life  is  too  large  for  his 
cistern,  and  he  becomes  a  relic. 

After  all,  the  one  simple  primary  need  of  the  church  today 
is  hardly  a  need  on  the  part  of  the  church  at  all.  The  church, 
though  it  has  a  mission,  is  no  mendicant.  The  need  is  on  the 
part  of  the  people,  especially  those  who  are  outside  of  the  churches, 
that  they  wake  up  to  a  proper  sense  of  values.  If  a  half,  or  more, 
of  the  rural  population  are  not  themselves  a  part  of  the  church,  it 
is  because  they  are  like  the  woman  who  grumbles  because  the 
schools  do  not  educate  her  children  when  she  keeps  them  at  work 
all  of  every  day  in  her  own  back  yard.  It  is  the  old  fallacy  of 
the  blind  man's  complaining  because  the  sun  does  not  shine.  The 
man  who  calls  the  church  "a  graft  on  society  for  the  support  of 
the  ministry"  is  an  impudent  vagabond,  too  mean  to  eat  the  feast 
of  his  life  when  it  is  already  set  before  him.  He  forgets  that 
the  church  is  the  only  voluntary  institution  which  deals  in  the 
richest  values  of  two  worlds.  He  is  too  busy  with  the  muck  rake 
to  enjoy  the  beautiful  flowers  that  he  expects  will  grow  where  he 
has  planted  no  seed.  But  they  are  already  fragrant  in  his  neigh- 
bor's garden.  He  has  not  waked  up  to  a  proper  sense  of  values. 
When  one  truly  becomes  alive  to  the  correct  sense  of  values  he 
just  then  begins  to  appreciate  what  the  church  really  is.  "Values" 
is  just  the  word  we  want.  The  church  is  a  fellowship  of  men  in 
the  use  and  enjoyment  of  religious  and  ethical  values.  In  this 
economic  age  we  ought  to  be  able  to  understand  the  church  when 
it  is  thus  defined.  Economics  treats  of  the  adjustment  of  life  to 
the  wherewithal  of  life.  The  economics  of  the  church  treats  of 
the  wherewithal  of  the  spiritual  life  in  the  terms  of  moral  and 
religious  values,  the  only  eternal  commodities  that  have  a  price. 
When  we  pay  for  the  church  with  time  and  cash,  if  we  appreciate 
what  we  are  doing,  we  are  only  investing  in  one  set  of  values  in 


550  Methodist  Review  [July 

the  same  way  as,  at  the  real  estate  market,  the  playhouse  or  the 
university,  we  invest  in  other  sets  of  values.  How  hard  and  yet 
how  easy  is  the  task  of  appreciation!  Now  we  can  relate  the 
things  which  seem  to  the  things  which  are ;  things  partial  to  the 
one  whole.  The  church  does  not  primarily  need  money,  but  the 
people  need  appreciation,  or  the  proper  sense  of  values.  There 
need  be  no  trouble  because  the  minister  lives  at  the  expense  of  the 
people  when  it  is  seen  that  he  is  their  servant.  He  creates  their 
highest  joys  by  interpreting  the  values  that  abide.  The  people 
will  not  be  divorced  from  the  church  when  they  can  realize  that 
it  is  the  mediator  of  the  highest  powers  of  character.  The  people 
need  the  church  infinitely  more  than  the  church  needs  the  people. 
Our  willful  sinning  keeps  us  from  the  throne  room  of  the  King. 
This  is  as  true  negatively  as  positively.  It  as  naturally  faces  the 
problem  as  the  ideal.  The  great  problem  is  that  the  church  too 
often  is  not  the  church — a  problem  in  reality.  If  there  was  an 
appreciation  and  appropriation  of  the  values  for  which  the  true 
church  stands  the  study  of  the  genius  loci  of  so-called  churches 
would  not  so  often  reveal  that  they  were  mere  social  clubs,  stand- 
ing for  anything  and  everything  but  spiritual  excellence  in  the 
lives  of  men.  The  problem  of  leadership  would  be  solved.  Men 
would  seek  their  guides  from  among  their  own  number  in  the 
choice  spirits  that  are  tuned  by  nature,  by  training,  and  by  grace 
to  catch  the  music  of  the  world  of  which  the  present  is  only  an 
echo.  Sectarian  ambition,  though  not  necessarily  denominational 
organization,  would  soon  give  place  to  the  true  spirit  of  brother- 
hood in  service.  And  that  service  would  be  so  free,  so  helpful 
and  whole-hearted  that  the  machinery  of  the  church  would  soon 
fade  into  the  established  habits  of  mankind  in  the  arts  of  mutual 
love.  The  world  is  nearly  as  responsible  for  such  an  awakening 
as  can  be  the  militant  church.  The  dissatisfied  classes  ought  to 
learn  by  experience  that  they  have  followed  the  wrong  god  long 
enough. 


